Connors River Dam Recreation Facilities

Connors River Dam Recreation Facilities

This proposal for the Conners River Dam Recreation Facilities adopts a different approach to the typical method of disparate smaller buildings spread throughout the precinct.

The new Connors River Dam is to be built on the western side of the Great Dividing Range near Moranbah in Central Queensland. The dam will service the growing needs of the coal mining industry and will also provide much needed recreation opportunities for the increasing population and subsequent tourism market. A new recreation area including a boat ramp, artificial beach and camping ground will be developed in the immediate vicinity of the new dam.

The brief called for a manager’s residence, café, kiosk, camp kitchen, showers and ablutions, laundry, machinery storage, barbecue shelters and two additional staff residences. In an unusual plan, most of the facilities have been brought together under a single roof in a long, low timber framed building that ‘bridges‘ the two parts of the camping grounds. This strategy, not only cost effective and providing for more efficient management and supervision, allows for a greater sense of community and place, notwithstanding in such a large site and the temporary nature of the campers’ presence.

It is planned on a strict grid to accommodate a structurally-efficient, seasoned hardwood structure and cladding, which will all be stained black. The scale and character of the main building has oblique references to the black trunks of the ironbark trees of the region, and the pragmatic form and construction of the rural sheds found throughout the area